Conditions 'worse than hell' in typhoon-hit Philippines

HARARE - Survivors root through the splintered wreckage of their homes searching for loved ones who may be buried beneath. Others are scrambling to find food and water in areas littered with corpses.

Three days after Super Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest storms in recorded history, scythed across the central Philippines, people here are struggling to grasp the enormity of what they have lost and the challenges they face.

The storm, known as Yolanda in the Philippines, has left devastation on a monumental scale in its wake.

Thousands of houses have been obliterated. Many areas are still cut off from transport, communications and power. Some officials say that as many as 10,000 people may have been killed.

"There are too many people dead," said Richard Gordon, chairman of the Philippine Red Cross. "We have bodies in the water, bodies on the bridges, bodies on the side of the road."

Amid the carnage, hundreds of thousands of survivors are trying to cope with a lack of water, food, shelter and medicine. Aid workers and government officials are battling to get emergency supplies to hard-hit areas cut off by fallen trees and power lines.

In Tacloban, a city of more than 200,000 that suffered a catastrophic blow from the typhoon, dead bodies still lay by the side of the road Monday.

Some had been covered by sheets or tarpaulins. But others remain where they had fallen, a look of horror frozen on their faces.

Aid workers are worried the grim abundance of corpses will create health risks for survivors, who are drinking water from underground wells without knowing if it's been contaminated.

Magina Fernandez, who was trying to get out of Tacloban at the city's crippled airport, described the situation there as "worse than hell."

"Get international help to come here now -- not tomorrow, now," she said, directing some of her anger at Philippine President Benigno Aquino III, who toured some of the hardest-hit areas Sunday.

Tacloban was shattered by Haiyan, whose tremendous force brought a wall of water roaring off the Gulf of Leyte. The storm surge leveled entire neighborhoods of wooden houses and flung large ships ashore like toys.

"I have not spoken to anyone who has not lost someone, a relative close to them," said Tacloban Mayor Alfred Romualdez, who narrowly escaped death during the storm's fury. "We are looking for as many as we can."

But Tacloban is far from the only devastated area. Authorities are trying to establish the level of destruction elsewhere along Haiyan's path.

"It's not just Tacloban; it's all the coastal areas" in that region, said Gordon of the Red Cross.

Fishing communities stretch for miles down the eastern coast of Leyte, the island where Gen. Douglas Macarthur led U.S. troops ashore in 1944 at the start of the long, bloody fight to retake the Philippines from the Japanese during World War II.

The other settlements along the coast are likely to have suffered a similar fate to Tacloban's.

Across the Gulf of Leyte lies Samar, where Haiyan made its first of six deadly landfalls in the Philippines on Friday.

Government and aid officials say they are still trying to reach many affected communities on that island.

A similar challenge exists farther west, on the islands of Cebu and Panay, which also suffered direct hits from the typhoon.

The death toll, as reported by the Philippine Armed Forces Central Command, stood at 942 Monday night. But with so much about the storm's impact still unknown, a full accounting of its victims will take time.

"We can give you estimates right now, but none of it will be accurate." Gordon said.

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